Re: what is the purpose of "LOCALVERSION" variable in scripts/setlocalversion?

i was unaware of the apparently independent variable "LOCALVERSION" which is used in that assignment.

there's precious little mention of that variable ... under what circumstances does one set it?

I have sometimes seen a "+" or a short-commit-sha appended when building kernel in a local git repository with uncommitted/committed changes. Also i suppose one could run make LOCALVERSION=<unique-string-here> to help identify a kernel image by the embedded <unique-string> if required at a later time. As the image name is one of the first things to be printed in the kernel/dmesg logs, it helps map error logs to their respective builds.